5 Steps to Making Money in your Home Based Business

Fact: People start a home business to make money. If your business is consistently costing you money and not making you money you should evaluate every aspect of the business.

Evaluate the Product Line

Any business evaluation should start with the product line. Are you marketing a product that is affordable to the majority of your target market? If the product is only affordable to a few then you have a problem. In order for you to make a sale or secure a reliable customer base of repeat buyers you will have to reach more people to find the few who can actually afford your product. This is no easy task and could cost you more money in advertising than you have to spend.

Is the product line a one time shot or will it be repurchased once used? This is key to repeat sales which can be the lifeline of any business. Repeat sales will also keep your business on the plus side of profit with little effort on your part.

Evaluate your Product Knowledge

How much do you really know about your product as well as your competitions products. This is another key factor in your own success. Have you done your research or are you relying on what you were told by your sponsor, upline or company? Your ability to portray yourself as an expert in your business will give you an advantage over other marketers not only when it comes to marketing your product, but also if you are working on building a team to earn residual income.

Take the time to learn as much as you can about your own products as well as those product lines and companies that are your competitors.

Evaluate the Tools of your Trade

Look at the marketing material that you were provided. If you fall prey to the old school marketing techniques filled with hype and buzz words you may need to develop your own tools to market your product and build your business.

Another aspect of evaluating your tools is to look at the actual tools provided by your sponsor or company. Are you looking at paying additional monies each month for websites, autoresponders or landing pages? This will be additional money spent each month and possibly will keep your business in the red.

Evaluate the Focus of your Sponsor

This is another important key to your success. Is your sponsor only looking to pad their own pocket each month by encouraging you to buy additional product or sign up for their affiliate programs? Is your sponsor available to you when you need them to answer your questions or are they hard to reach or keeping business hours that don’t fit into your schedule? Do they provide additional support systems that provide you with answers to the common questions for the times that they are not available?

The most important factor for any business should be getting that business into profit as quickly as possible. This can’t be done if your sponsor’s only focus in on their own business.

Evaluate Yourself

We all need to evaluate ourselves from time to time and doing so when it comes to our home business is what allows us to grow not only our business but also to expand our own knowledge.
Look at yourself honestly and determine if you truly stand behind your products, tools and marketing methods. Do you believe that you can sell the products? Do you believe that you can learn what you need to know in order to portray yourself as an expert? Do you offer your business partners up to date tools and training or are you relying on old school marketing techniques that have been handed down for generations?

My own Road to Success

One of the biggest problems in todays MLM and Direct Marketing industry is the lack of common sense and integrity when applied to your business. It’s up to each and every marketer to apply the same common sense and integrity to our business as we would in our own personal lives.

When I started my home business in January of 2005, I made a commitment to myself and my sponsor to work my business for 2 years. I fulfilled that commitment and then evaluated my accomplishments over that 2 year period.

I did have a small level of success however I also believed that I could have achieved much more had I been provided with the proper training and tools.

I had very few months where my business was in profit, and also had to deal with my husband who financed my business each month. It’s hard to justify continuing anything that consistently sucks money and doesn’t make money.

Late in 2006 I evaluated what I had done as well as the tools I used and changed my business plan to incorporate two key factors. The first was listening to my own common sense and the second was to educate myself in my industry as well as marketing.

These two very simple factors are what brought my own home business from sucking money from our family budget into a business that has made money every single month of 2007.

I am thrilled to say that now my expenses are not paid for through the earnings generated from my home business and I am also able to contribute to our family finances as well.

I am also better able to help my growing team to get their business into profit quickly and provide them with the up to date tools they need to grow their business without draining their budgets. This is key because a business that is in profit rarely closes its doors and by supporting my team I am supporting my own business.

If you are interested in how to get your own business into profit using common sense marketing, visit my Website and request information.

Do You Provide Tools to your Team or just Affiliate Links that put Cash in your pocket?

Clearly affiliate marketing is important in the big picture of what we do as Internet Marketers, but is your bottom line to milk every extra penny for every tool you refer your downline to, or to provide tools that will help your team?

I've struggled with this one early in my MLM business, but finally decided that my bottom line was providing my team with every resource I have available regardless of how much affiliate money it put into my pocket.

When I started my business I didn't realize how much money could be generated from affiliate marketing. That changed quickly with my AWeber account. But referring my team members to this affiliate isn't always the best option for them.

I'm fortunate that early on I found some tools that I was able to pay a flat fee for and then provide my team with a few key tools that they could use to promote their business. It was a pretty simple program that provided them with a url rotator, ad tracker and a web page that they could use as their landing page.

I would give these tools to my team to help them get started without having to reach into their pockets and the tools have been well received by my team members.

Over the years these programs have been improved and now include many more very useful tools at no cost to the people I refer to the program. The system now includes a fully functional Autoresponder which has been a stumbling block for my team members on a budget.

Yes I realize that $20 a month isn't much for me, but if I had a couple of kids at home it would be.

I've been criticized and asked if I was setting up a "welfare mentality" with the free tools I provide and I even was asked if what I was doing was "duplicatable". Forgive me, but the ability to duplicate something isn't really what "my" business is about. It's another one of those old school marketing techniques that sound great but in reality work for only a few.

So as the release of the new program was announced providing a multitude of awesome online tools including an advertising module, I had to decide how to present it to my team. It was clear that the best thing to do was give it to them and let them decide for themselves if it was a system they wanted to use.

I did let them know if they were currently using other resources to keep those in place until they had evaluated the new program. Doing this allows my team members to have the tools they need for their Internet marketing without having to dig into their pockets to pay for the tools. It also meant that I would lose some of my affiliate money each month, but the bottom line is always to provide the best tools at the best price for my team. What I will gain in their own business growth by them using the free tools will far outweigh the small affiliate commissions I lost.

And then there's the obvious...

The less they have to spend on websites, autoresponders, advertising and other things, the more money they have available to buy product which they can sell and put money into their pocket as well as my pocket. Win Win.

If you are curious about what I provide my team members use the banner to check it out. No money goes into my pocket by promoting this program.

Addicted to Domain Names?

There I’ve said it, I admit it and now I’m doing something about it!

Over the course of my online business adventure, I’ve managed to acquire quite a large number of domain names. You know the different dot.com’s that you use to promote different aspects of what ever you are doing online.

Well I sat down and started evaluating the different domains I had and man did I feel a bit foolish. I had so many that it was costing me a small fortune to renew them through out the year.

I don’t discount that at the time I purchased most of them, I had a specific need. But once those needs have passed…let it go!

The process of weeding out the ones I no longer want to pay for wasn’t too hard. I first checked each domain to see where it was pointing.

Once I knew that I had to evaluate if I really needed a specific domain for that page. Most of the time I didn’t and could house those pages on my main website.

The next step was checking to see if they had any pagerank or value. Much to my surprise several of them did. Those went on my keeper list and I knew I would find another use for them.

I also learned that when you have a domain name with longevity it becomes more valuable. So I had to consider those poorly thought out domain names I had purchased early on in my Internet adventure.

Honestly, most of those were chosen at a time when I didn’t have a clue about how to build a website let alone what keywords were. I’ve learned so much since that time that I let go of many of those cutesy domain names opting to keep the ones that were newer but keyword rich.

I ended up dumping probably 8 domain names and will now keep a watchful eye on the rest of them as they come up for renewal. And I’m putting those with pagerank to use for some of my promotional stuff and information sites.

One thing I also had to learn was that an emotional attachment to a domain name just isn’t a good enough reason to keep it. You know…the first domain I ever bought…I didn’t want to let it go, but the bottom line was I seriously didn’t have a use for it so I bit the bullet and let it go.

And then there are the “deals” you get offered when you are purchasing a domain name…I got a deal on what at the time seemed to be a great idea…instead I’ve come to realize that www.IGotLit.com (for my candle business) actually appears to be the domain of a heavy drinker and it’s mine until 2008!

Take your time when purchasing a domain name. Consider some good keywords to incorporate into the domain name and above all remember to let go of the ones that aren’t working for you anymore.

Todays MLM and Responsible Leadership

Multi Level Marketing is different today than it was just a few years ago. When the World Wide Web opened up it changed how we promote our products, our services as well as ourselves. It changed the way we do many things in our business and our personal lives. Our ability to adapt and our openness to developing new, up to date tools to help our own business grow as well as that of out downline should be a major concern for all of us.

My experience is that the majority of the “Old School” marketing techniques just don’t work in todays modern, electronically driven Multi Level Marketing businesses.

I've been told that in the not so distant past when you wanted to share your Multi Level Marketing opportunity with someone you would invite him or her to an Opportunity Meeting at a local hotel. If they showed up, you relied on the Key Speaker to “Close” for you. Conference calls, online meetings and digital recordings sent over the Internet now relay our message to our prospects.

We have a huge advantage over Network Marketers of the past. We are able to reach more people and have the ability to target exactly who we are looking for. It is in our best interest to develop the tools and training to teach our downlines how to do exactly that.

The Internet has made it possible for MLM prospects to look at many different business opportunities at once, without leaving the comfort of their homes. Today’s prospects are savvier and rarely fall prey to the old school pressure tactics. They also have the ability to shop for their sponsor, which can make the competition stiff. Knowing this, you have to find a way to stand out from the crowd and offer something special to your prospects and your customers.

Working Your Warm Market

We have all been told to work our warm market. The warm list is an MLM standard. Make the list of your friends and family and then introduce them to your business. Is this really a method that works?

If you think about it, this method is ineffective in todays MLM. Look at the top money earners in your company. When they show up at a company function are their friends and families there with them as top money earners? A better way to work your warm market is to send out an announcement about your products and leave it at that. This gets the word out and you will still be invited to family dinners. Working your warm market may work if you have a quality product that is affordable, but if you are looking to build a downline your warm market is the last place you should start.

The Company Convention

How many of you have been told the importance of attending your company conventions? I know I was. I even hosted a couple of events myself. “If you attend the company convention your business will grow!”

I will be the first to tell you that what I got from attending company events was some warm fuzzies and an empty wallet. Yes these events are exciting and get you pumped up. If you determine that is what you need to be successful, then you should go.

I'm not "anti-company convention”, but you have to keep in perspective. I personally can't justify telling someone in my downline who is struggling to show a profit each month that they should do what they have to in order to attend a company function because attending company conventions does not generate income or leads.

Get Them Into Profit

As sponsors we have a responsibility to help our downline get into profit as quickly as possible. This is not accomplished by sending them to meetings they can ill afford or by getting them hooked up with all of our affiliates before they really need those services.

We do need to provide our downlines with these resources, but only when it is appropriate. Our first efforts need to be focused on getting them into profit so they can generate the income to pay for the affiliate services they need using the money they earned.

Provide Accurate Information

Another change that the Internet has brought about is the amount of information that our customers and prospects have access to. As a young adult I attended some of the opportunity meetings for several different companies. The only information I was given came from the person who invited me to the meeting and those who ran the meeting. Now they have it all at their fingertips and it amazes me how much wrong information is being given out.

As responsible business people we do a disservice to our company and ourselves if we represent our products using incorrect information. If you have to misrepresent your product to make a sale or recruit someone you should reconsider what you are marketing.

Empowerment

Much of the MLM world is focused on empowering your downline. However, to accomplish this you must provide the tools of empowerment. If someone in your downline asks what they should do to build their page rank and you tell them to write articles and submit them, is that really empowering them? What if they have no clue about article writing let alone where to submit one? Telling someone who has never written an article that this is what he or she needs to do is only going to put another obstacle in his or her path.

A better option is to tell them they need to write articles and provide some resources for the basics of how to write an article. Not providing this simple type of resource has the ability to make your team member feel trapped and anyone who feels trapped is not very productive.

Whats Your Bottom Line?

Lets face it; most of us are in business to make money and because we were tired of having a JOB and a BOSS. As Responsible Leaders we need to provide our downline with up to date tools that produce and stop telling them to do things simply because that is what we were told.
Don’t short change your own or your teams creativity because you are more comfortable with the old school ways.

Allow yourself and your team to “Step out of their Box” by not shooting down their new ideas and exploring the possibilities because it doesn’t fit into your way of thinking. Empower yourself and your team by looking for new avenues that teach what is necessary to be successful.

Conclusion

Take the tools you were given and find a way to adapt them to our time. No you don’t have to reinvent that proverbial wheel. But you do need to modernize it. But keep in mind, if the wheel is broken, you are going to need to get out your saw an hammer. If these means putting in some extra time and developing tools that work, then get to it! Teach your downline to build a firm foundation and lead them by example!